Dandelion Wine

The summer of 1971, I was 11 years old.  Sixth grade was behind me.  "Middle school" loomed ahead.  Both parents worked.  I and my two sisters were tended to by a nanny.  Her name was Mary.  Her son's, John and Jerry had been my playmates on and off for years.  I lived To Kill a Mockingbird and I'll Fly Away.

I woke every day that summer by 7:30.  I cooked my own breakfast--cereal, or cinnamon toast, or toasted cheese--and by 9:00 every morning I was in the garden.  I hoed and harvested tomatoes, squash, okra, radish.  With cousins who lived two houses up the road, I built "forts" in the field beside our home--areas where the near-head-high (to an 11-year-old) rabbit tobacco plants were bent down at the end of a maze of an entry path.  I played spin-the-bottle and got into all manner of other trouble with female cousins and neighbors.  (When I consider the freedom we had to wander back then, I consider it a wonder we survived.  Clearly none of us think our own children capable of the same responsibility at such early ages.)

But my favorite memory of that summer consists of the reading I did lying in bed each morning, enjoying that last fleeting hour of coolness before the sweltering southern summer sun turned house and world both into a place where any clothing more than cutoff jeans and a wholly optional tee shirt were too much to bear.  I remember Dandelion Wine and The Martian Chronicles.  And by remember, what I mean is, I remember that I read them, and that I enjoyed the former in particular, tremendously. As for the action of either, I've not a clue.

Fast forward forty years.

Tonight, out walking with the family after dinner, the air was laden with the smells of summer in the country.  I live in the city mind you, or what native Richmonders refer to as "the near west end."  I laugh at that.  Four blocks "nearer" and it would be in The Fan, and no one disputes that as being essentially in the city.  But the alleys here are alive with the smell of flowers, of cut grass, of treated wooden fences, of the dirt beneath your feet, of gardenia, magnolia, and honeysuckle's last gasp.  Rabbits run down the alley before you and squirrels scold from fence top.

And if you close your eyes and take a deep breath, you can travel through time to a summer of lazy mornings, food fresh from the garden, Royal Blue spray paint and fresh bearing grease applied to a boy's bicycle, crawdads snatched from beneath flat rocks in streams about to be dammed to create perfect ponds for skinny-dipping deep in the hollows of grandparent's old homesteads.  You can smell the leather of new wallets perfect for tucking away money earned pricing groceries in a family store--money saved with the object of a new RCA clock radio in mind.

And you can wake again the next day to that clock radio, pull the paperback book from the nightstand, and embrace again a dawning day and the beginnings of a lifelong love of the wonder of the written word.

All in a breath, if the right four-year-old is tugging at your finger to show you the treasure of newly discovered unidentifiable metal plucked from the otherwise inconspicuous dirt of the roadway.

Guest Post: Roots

I have so little time to write these days that even this gift languished for days in my inbox. If you can read it and wonder why I married the author, then you haven't been reading the blog long enough to understand me yet. Enjoy. Doc

Today, a friend of mine sent me a letter about a conversation she had with a taxi cab driver. He had asked her about her country of origin and she had proudly replied, “I am from Haiti.” His surprising response to this, in light of recent news about the earthquake, was not one of compassion. Instead, he berated Haiti for its social and political difficulties. He asked her why the poverty level was so high and why Haitians were lazy. She said he was haughty and disdainful in his ignorance. My friend is a highly educated, extremely accomplished woman. She said she found herself without words for this man, who was in fact, not of American birth either. He was Indian, coming from a country with a reputation for severe poverty itself. I can understand her frustration, her shock, and her impulse to defend her homeland. She wrote to my family and I because we are from New Orleans. My parents survived Katrina, but their home did not. I was lucky enough to have moved years prior to the storm, but we are all still rebuilding emotionally.

My husband, who hosts this blog today, commented on William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom as a parallel to the concept of others not understanding why we live where we do, why we are who we are. He discussed Shreve, a character not of southern descent, who says to Mississippi-born Quentin, “Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.” Quentin’s response is that one has to be from there in order to understand it fully, but I think it is like breathing—being from a place is like breathing. It comes so naturally, how could I ever explain it to someone that cannot? And why is it that others enjoy ridiculing and finding fault with each gardenia-infused breath?

Below is my response to my friend’s letter today, with only minor details tweaked:

I will never forget when New Orleans flooded-- the impact on its people who lived there and elsewhere. I was at the gym one day and the television was running footage of the city and newsmen were discussing the looting and crime that was taking place. Two men behind me said to each other that New Orleans was as worthless as Sodom Gomorrah and that this was a deserved punishment. They commented that God was "cleaning out the trash" or something like that. I was so upset, I couldn't speak. Even to this day, here in Virginia, only an hour and a half from the Atlantic Ocean, I am asked why New Orleanians choose to live so close to the water in a flood zone. I have been asked for years why race and poverty is the way it is there.

Haiti is home for you the way New Orleans is home for me. I do not live there physically any more, and my accent is gone, but psychologically, I am as much a New Orleanian as ever. I think that way, eat that way, live that way. For those of us who grew up in this unique city, we know the jewel that our hometown makes us-- we are aware of our contribution to American culture. We were New Orleanians before we were Americans, and I think in many respects, still are.

New Orleans is riddled with crime, terrible poverty, prostitution, and corrupt politics. The men who rise to lead us are often trapped in a cycle of deceit, bribery, and selfishness. Were politicians not friends with the policemen who shut blind eyes to crime in certain districts, the city would be a different place. We are sadly accustomed to crime and poverty. We enable it by tolerating it. That cycle continues.

Why do people stay there? Like Haiti for you, it's home. It's where Mama is, where your first steps were taken, where the neighbors brought you wine when you bought your first house. It's where life is celebrated in parades and festivals year round. It's where you can find the best food and coffee in the world. It's where the air smells of salt and humidity and flowers and spice-- sometimes in parts, sometimes all at once. Louisiana is the cradle for New Orleans. It's where my father's family settled generations ago. His grandmother was born there after her European parents quit the Jenny Lind orchestra to marry. Dad's paternal grandfather's family had been there before that. I have cousins affiliated with the original families that settled the city. And I attended a school established by Ursuline nuns, who ministered to the original families and emigrated with them from France.

Leaving home was hard. Choosing not to live there after my divorce was hard. Staying away is hard. Going back, New Orleans is the missing piece of the puzzle inside me, but life has sent me elsewhere.

I hate when people make rash judgments about our home. You would never hear me ask a New Yorker why he chooses to remain in an urban jungle, why someone from Montana chooses to stay living on his hundred acre tract of "poverty with a view" (as a rancher once told me), or why someone from even the Appalachians chooses to remain remotely located in a mountain shanty. We know who we are.

My hope for Haiti is that it is resurrected as a stronger country. Tragedy draws attention to need-- perhaps that is the strangely divine purpose in this horror and loss. Haiti will need years of rebuilding, like New Orleans. And I hope it finds good, strong souls to lead the way.

Best wishes to you, readers, in wherever you choose to call home. May compassion be yours in your own time of trouble there, and may your own sense of place be as natural as breathing.

Laura V. Bonner

Our Vanishing Americana

If I weren't going to be on a plane when this airs tonight, I'd be watching. I'm consoled by the fact that it'll air twice more in December. And for any who know me personally, feel free to add the book to my Christmas list. ;-)

"Our Vanishing Americana" airs tonight at 8 p.m. on WTVI, with additional airings Thursday at 9 p.m, Dec. 14 at 10 p.m., Dec. 18 at 10 p.m. and Dec. 28 at 9 p.m.

25 Random Things About My Father

I mentioned once before, just in passing, John Eldredge's claim, in Wild at Heart, that every man is wounded somehow by his father. I implied in that earlier post that such wasn't the case with me. Today, Father's Day, I want to state it outright.

I do not believe I suffered any psychic wounding at the hands of my father, ever.

Honestly, that's no small claim. I've watched other men and their dads. I've watched women and their father's too. I had acquaintances long ago that couldn't return home when they left the Air Force Academy they hated because their fathers told them not to come home if they quit. I had a so much more than friend, who will likely read this, who went there for a year, because her father told her if she would try it for that long, he would foot the bill for college elsewhere--she did; he did not. I've heard fathers say things to children in public that made my heart ache.

I had and have the best father I know. I know a couple more who are right up there with him (my new father-in-law among them), and I have friends who think or thought the same of their fathers. We are lucky people, those of us in this club, and today is a day we celebrate that luck.

Not all that long ago, I posted 25 Random Things About Me. Today, I'm going to take a shot at publishing another 25 about him. Wish me luck.

25 Random Things About My Father

1. He has taken up the drums. At least, he bought a drum set months ago, and for a while at least, he was playing them. This is especially interesting to me because a little less than four years ago, I took drum lessons for a short while. Neither I nor my father knew this about one another, which is a good segue to the next point:
   
2. My father's life has mirrored mine in so many ways that it's genuinely eerie, especially romantically. I could elaborate, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.
3. I suspect my father of being a closet adrenaline junkie. He owned a motorcycle from the time my parents split up until well into his second marriage. And he was, after all, a volunteer fire chief for over a decade.
4. When I left for the Air Force Academy, over three decades ago, the last thing I remember him saying to me as I walked out of Charlotte's Douglas Airport to climb the stairs to a waiting jet, other than, "I love you," is, "If you get there and you don't like it, son, you know you can always come home." It put staying there all on my shoulders. No expectation, no threats, no rebellion value in leaving (not that I ever felt any need to rebel). It made it possible to stay even during the months that I hated it most and seriously thought of leaving. Having options makes almost any task less onerous.
5. In all the years of my youth, he gave me only one spanking I hadn't genuinely earned. That one time, he was acting on misinformation from my Sunday school teacher. I didn't forget, but I didn't really hold it against him either. I just never liked that teacher much after that.
6. I've seen him pitch nearly perfect games of horseshoes. At Five Forks ball park in China Grove, NC, I watched him and Lee Smith, on their way to winning first place in a church league, throw ringer after ringer from one end to the other. It was awe inspiring.
7. He taught me gun safety at an early age, and how to shoot birds on the wing, to drain a rabbit's bladder before putting it in your hunting coat, how to build a rabbit trap, and how to enjoy the beauty of good bird dogs working a field.
8. He also taught me, by example, to think of all men as equals, at least equal in worth and rights, vehemently disdaining all the petty prejudices that so many fathers so sadly wean their children on. The stories in this regard are almost legend and fodder for longer posts at a later date. I'll simply say here that had Harper Lee known him, and if you knew him and her novel, you would think him her model for Atticus Finch.
9. He blames a long tour in Alaska, at Gambell Air Base, on St Lawrence Island, for the early loss of his hair. His seven brothers each kept theirs most of their lives.
10. His children have always come first in his life. Whatever other ambitions he may have had, I truly believe that being a good father was the ruling goal of his existence. God knows, he put up with more, and sacrificed more, for our sake than any other man I know would have.
11. Right behind Atticus Finch, the character from fiction that he is most like would be Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry. He was, for all practical purposes, the unspoken mayor of the small town in which I grew up. Smaller than Mayberry.
12. He can teach anyone to waterski and he was always good at it himself. For the most part, when anyone learned to waterski with us, they learned to slalom, right out of the gate.
13. He plays a wicked game of hopscotch. He always played with us on the shore during our annual vacations at Windy Hill Beach, SC, and I have since played more than a few times with my own daughters.
14. He loves tractors. He may think we haven't caught on to that, but he does. I'm not entirely certain there isn't a frustrated farmer trapped in him somewhere.
    
15. His two greatest shots in golf may have been his hole-in-one and his blind eagle. The hole-in-one was so dead on that it bent the base of the pin going into the hole. In basketball lingo, he "stripped the net." His blind eagle I was there for--a par-four on which he'd hooked the ball into the adjacent fairway, hiding the green from him behind a set of pines dividing the two holes. He hit the ball over the pines on his second shot and into the hole. I found it there. He was still looking everywhere else.
    
16. His dedication to golf during my youth was such that my youngest sister once recited the days of the week as, "Sunday, Monday, Golfday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . " He worked all day on Saturdays until he retired, but only half a day on Tuesdays. He is as good a golf coach as he is a ski coach. I should have tried out for the golf team at the Academy instead of wasting my time with track.
17. He would still like to learn to fly. He says he's let that ambition go, but I think I know better.
18. He can fix or build just about anything.
19. So far as I know, he has never cultivated any of the vices that other men, including myself are prey to. He doesn't swear, drink, or smoke, and yet he doesn't begrudge other men those "pleasures." I think he is simply cautious of the genes he carries, having had a father, grandfather, and more than one brother for whom these things were problems.
20. He is fiercely and poignantly patriotic. I remember him once calling me to the window over our kitchen sink, pointing to the flag flying at the fire station he helped found about a quarter mile away, and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?"
21. In our family business, he was all about Total Quality Management and focusing on the customer long before TQM became a watchword for the rest of the world. I remember trying to figure out what the fuss was about when the Air Force tried to institute TQM because I had always thought those principals were common knowledge. I've learned better since.
22. He is a true gentleman--gentle and yet fiercely strong. He is always polite. He opens my stepmother's car door, holds her chair, helps her with her coat.
    
23. He's more or less ambidextrous. He plays sports left-handed, yet he writes right-handed. It makes him very handy to have around when your ball is up against a tree and you really need a left-handed club to swing.
24. What he lacks in distance these days, he more than makes up in accuracy. I've been able to outdrive him since college, but I've never outscored him on the links.
25. I love him. I admire him. And I still want to be like him when I grow up.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

On the Road Again

I'll be on the road this weekend, in Richmond, Virginia, looking for a new place to live, beginning another new adventure. Blogging will likely be light as I explore firsthand, yet again, the old saying that, "North Carolina is a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit."

Snapshot: Home

Two people sit in a room that could not possibly be more warmly lit. The walls are a deep red tending toward iron oxide in the light of lamps on the mantle, on the black, baby grand Steinway, and on the marble-topped end table. Plentiful windows trimmed in glossy white enamel let in the subdued light of a gray day. Rain washes the world outside and taps a syncopated rhythm in the downspout on the near corner of the two-story house. Through the paned glass rear door, deck boards glisten and reflect the gray sky broken by the branches of a winter forest. Below the deck and across a back yard of mostly moss and through the bare winter trunks beyond, the creek isn't so much angry with the surplus it hurries along as merely enthusiastic, energetic, awake and purposeful now, unlike its usual sleepy self.

Inside again, a wood fire crackles warmly in a stone fireplace and the man looks up from the corner of the couch where he's grading student essays on a notebook computer the desktop of which shows two rocking chairs and hanging baskets on the front porch of this house and the background color of which matches the walls so that when he leaves he takes this place with him (but never so much as of himself he leaves behind). He looks up at the fire, across the gray-white-and-black Husky sleeping contentedly in the middle of the thick carpet, almost but not quite snoring, centered on the fireplace and positioned halfway between the man and woman. The woman sits nearer the fire, sideways to it in a rocking chair she refinished years ago and in which she has cradled to sleep countless times her young daughter and younger son. And for all that the idea of a rocking chair calls forth visions of age, this is a young and beautiful mother whose oldest child came into this world years after the dog stretched lazily at her feet. Yet in her rocking image, as she sits editing a book on yet another notebook computer perched on the fuzzy soft blanket that warms her knees, the man sees in her the mother she is, the mother who gave her life, the grandmothers he never knew, and years hence, the grandmother she will become. And in that vision is the wellspring of the contentment we only think comes from the smell of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven or the dulcet tones of a lullaby trickling down the stairs from the nursery like the gentle fall of water over the stones of a brook. Feeling his gaze, she looks up at him, tilts her head and smiles.

Nothing is spoken. Two separate lifetimes lead to this moment, and for now, this is but a passing like two participants at a Maypole who meet one another twice in each full round of the pole. For now, the dance is necessary. Patient they are. Because of all they've seen and what they know, they content themselves with those passing smiles. What they've each seen is what enables them to understand one another as no one else could. What they know is that the nature of the Maypole is such that each passing, each circuit of the pole, each cycle of reunion and separation brings them closer to the base, closer to a union from which parting will no longer be necessary.

For now, the rain keeps a broken rhythm, the fire crackles in counterpoint, the Husky chases Arctic hares that lope misplaced through the powdery new snow of Siberian dreams, and the man and the woman know what they know.

For now, that's enough.

Livermush: Good Eatin'!

It's funny how some things you grew up with seem normal to you, but strike others as strange. Livermush is one of those things. I love it so much my mom usually makes a point of having some on hand to fry for breakfast when I'm home.

I've always known it was a distinctly southern thing, but imagine my surprise the first time I went to the grocery in Charleston and found no one had even heard of it. Not at Publix. (Okay, no surprise. They started in Florida, that geographically separated province of New York and Cuba.) Not at Bi-Lo. (A little more surprising, since this is a chain more restricted to the area of the south I think of as home.) But most surprisingly, not even at Piggly-Wiggly, which, really, even if it has spread to seventeen states, you'd think would proudly carry anything made from pig.

For the uninitiated, here's the Wikipedia entry on this "poor boy's pâté":

Livermush (or Liver Mush or Liver Pudding) is a Southern United States foodstuff composed of pig liver, head parts, and cornmeal. It is commonly spiced with pepper and sage. Vaguely similar to scrapple, livermush was most likely brought south through the Appalachian mountains by German settlers from Philadelphia. Livermush is colloquially known as poor man's or poor boy's pâté.

Shelby, North Carolina hosts an annual Livermush Exposition, which began in 1987 to celebrate the unique delicacy. In that year the Cleveland County Commissioners and the Shelby City Council passed resolutions proclaiming that "livermush is the most delicious, most economical and most versatile of meats." Other towns in North Carolina that have livermush festivals include Drexel and Marion. Sonnys Grill in Blowing Rock, NC is famous for its livermush [1]

It is commonly prepared by cutting a slice off of a prepared loaf and frying it with grease in a skillet until golden brown, much like you would Spam. At breakfast it would be served alongside grits and eggs. For lunch it can be made into a sandwich with mayonnaise or mustard, either fried as above, or left cold. As livermush's popularity rises, it is appearing as a primary ingredient in dishes such as omelette and pizza.

And for the literary-minded among you, Wikipedia included a link to a Christian Science Monitor article with this jewel:

Some of its fans enjoy publicizing the unusual meat. Jan Karon, author of a series of books set in fictional Mitford, N.C., has her characters eating livermush in almost every volume.

And finally, for even those who grew up with it, here's a great little video clip from Mark DiCarlo's Taste of America series, on a visit to Shelby, NC:



Bottom line for me? I'll be carrying "home" to Charleston at least a couple pounds of this poor boy's pâté every time I visit Mom and Dad from here on out.

That's all I've got for this morning. Time to go fry some livermush and scramble some eggs. Mmm mmm!

Revisiting the Mountain

I've been dreadfully busy lately, and haven't posted much original in the past few days. Nor today. Instead, since readership has more or less doubled of late, I thought I'd take this opportunity to revisit a post, especially since, last night in the wee hours, I sat here in Charleston, SC, and read this particular piece to my youngest daughter from start to finish. It was late, even in Colorado, but she couldn't sleep. You see yesterday she got to see something that NASCAR drivers are accustomed to, but 16-yr-olds in their first year of driving are not: another vehicle crossing both lanes right in front of you before hitting the curb, going airborne, and landing upside down in a sidewalk planter. She couldn't sleep. She wanted a story. She knew the tale of Daddy's plane crash and some of the family history, but I'd never shared this account with her, since she wasn't yet ten when I wrote it.

So last night, I read it to her over the phone, hoping I was able to get away with playing a few long pauses off as being for dramatic effect, then sent her the doc file and the mp3. If you're new to the blog and you've not read "See Off This Mountain," give it a go. I'd like to believe it's more the sort of thing people visit for than breakdancing videos. It's certainly more the reason I have a blog.

Cheerwine: "The Nectar of North Carolina"

I managed, in a 27-yr Air Force career, to be stationed in or next door to North Carolina for ten of those years. The other 17 were split between Colorado and California. During the 10 years in Colorado, I used to get my "southern fix" in a couple of different ways, largely with the help of my Dad. Sometimes he just made sure when I was packing up to drive back from a visit that I wasn't forgetting essentials. Other times, he would ship those essentials to me. Essentials, in this case, translates to cases of Cheerwine and gallon jars of Duke's mayonnaise--two of the first things to enter my fridge in the new place here on the SC coast.

So, I thought it worth noting that there were two articles in the hometown paper Thursday about the soft drink I grew up considering a natural part of the world. The first regards "a new branding, packaging and marketing campaign" and the second tells us that, "Cheerwine has taken a foothold in New York City."

I couldn't help but smile at both of these. I could smile because it doesn't sound, for now at least, as if the company is trying to make itself into anything new. Rather, it sounds as though they're wisely attempting to do a better job of marketing what Cheerwine has always been. The article's quote from the company's CEO pretty much nails it: "Those who know and love Cheerwine have always connected the brand to simple and relaxed times, hanging out, eating Southern barbecue and being laid back." So long as they don't mess with that, I don't expect too many people will get bent out of shape about new packaging. It's changed before.

And that image of what Cheerwine is really all about is why I also had to smile at the second article. I recently had a series of conversations with several friends about the difference between Yankees and damned Yankees. You can't really fault a person for the geography of his or her birth. But you can sure fault them for their attitude, blue and grey alike. I have good friends who are Yankees; damned Yankees give me a fairly wide berth.

Here's why. Throughout my sojourns into over a dozen foreign countries through the years, I've tried, everywhere I've gone, not to be the obnoxious American (I'd have said Yankee here, but it might have muddied my point, despite the upsetting behavior being pretty much the same in either case). I've tried to make it clear that I've been interested in learning about the culture of the place I was visiting, in occasionally immersing myself in that culture, in appreciating it for its own values and pace. I have tried, studiously, to avoid giving any impression that I expected that culture to conform to my values, my pace, my concept of the shape the world should hold. I have tried, tried consciously, carefully, consistently, not to be a "damned Yankee."

I've noticed, especially now that I'm back here in the land of y'all somewhat permanently I hope, that some of these people are noticeable before they say a word. They wear an expression much as if someone had just waved a teenager's unwashed sneaker under their nose a good month into gym class. They hate it here. The pace irritates them. The culture we treasure, they revile. They cannot understand why, if the North won the war over a century ago, the South should remain so utterly foreign a place to them. They want quick service, they don't want to know how you're doing, and would rather you didn't ask about them. Their desire, their expectation even, is that we should have been just like them by now. On the whole, they are a good example of the very things that make the stereotypical obnoxious American abroad obnoxious. They are, if you think about it, a good example of some of the most misguided features of American policy abroad: the inappropriate drive, not to thoroughly understand a foreign culture and work within it to emphasize the better qualities, but to reshape it wholesale toward an American model. I'm well aware that we don't always get it this wrong, but on the whole, I think we far too frequently do.

But, I digress. My point is simple. The war goes on folks, never doubt it. It's not for real estate now though. It's for hearts and minds. The culture is both the battleground and the prize. And in that war, food is one of our main weapons. So when I read in that second article:

Brother Jimmy's Barbecue, which has six restaurants in New York, has begun offering Cheerwine with its traditional North Carolina-style barbecue and hush puppies. 'We have finally brought the nectar of Carolina to New York City,' said Jim Goldman, an owner and founder of Brother Jimmy's BBQ.

I couldn't help but smile. I had to smile at Brother Jimmy's slogan too: "Put Some South in Yo Mouth." Yeah! Take that ya'll.

Striving for Second Worst

Yesterday's blog post and the news story that spawned it reminded me of a story published in the Raleigh News & Observer back when I was a grad student at Chapel Hill.

Seems North Carolina had had the distinction of sporting the second worst SAT scores in the nation, then SC, who had been worst, moved up a notch, knocking us to the very bottom of the list. Comment from the state's education head? Not that we needed to look at the programs of the states near the top of the list and see what we could apply to The Old North State. No. In a remark that really revealed more about the roots of the problem than it was probably meant to, the person in charge of educating our Tarheel children remarked (and I may paraphrase here, after 19 years or so, but not much, if at all): "We clearly need to find out what South Carolina is doing, and do more of that."

Yeah. Second worst is so much better than the bottom.

If you get ambitious (I have the ambition, but not the time) and look up the original story (sometime between summer 89 and summer 91), I'd love to have a link.

As I Lay Dying, Redux

I recently completed what had to be one of the most challenging trips I'll ever make, driving from Colorado Springs, home for the last four years, to Charleston, home for at least the next nine months. I made the trip driving my Jeep Grand Cherokee, towing a 6 x 12 U-Haul trailer, loaded to its recommended max weight. Following close behind was my teenage (for a few more months) daughter in her VW Beetle.

We'd made the trip in the opposite direction a few short months ago at the end of May, both of us in the Beetle. We made it in two and a half easy days. I anticipated that we'd be a little slower eastbound. I had no idea.

It wasn't possible to drive that trailer above 60 mph without it developing a mind of its own. I gradually learned how to dampen its contortions while slowing to a speed where it would settle into straight trail again, but, let me tell you, that was work. Hard work by the end of a long day on the road. And it was frequent, even at 60. So I didn't push it. Anything encouraged it. Uneven road. Big trucks with bigger bow waves. I was careful never to let it approach the point where it would be in the driver's seat, but I could sense that it would be happy to take that position if I ever pressed it. The result was long, slow, exhausting days. What had been two and a half, ten to twelve hour days westbound became three, solid, twelve to fifteen hour days eastbound. Plans to stay with friends had to be abandoned. We arrived in Charleston after midnight at the end of the day I'd planned to be there by lunch, already half a day behind in my search for a new place to live. (I had begun looking for a place to live at least a month before, but had given up hope of finding the right place before my arrival because the best ones, the ones I had any interest in, always rented within days. So, I resolved to keep an eye on what was available, but knew that really making a decision would require being there.)

After just four hours of sleep, I met the world's kindest Realtor (who, if I ever have the opportunity to buy a home in Charleston, has my business, hands down) at 0800 the next morning and began a long day of looking at houses, condos, townhomes, and apartments. I can never sufficiently repay her for that day. That search itself may be the topic of another post altogether. It could have been much more painful. It didn't seem painful at first. We narrowed it, by day's end, to two places. I finally chose one based on the fact that it was far more accommodating to visits from my daughters, especially the one in Wilmington, who would, I was sure, drive down several times with friends if I chose the one I did--opting, at the same price, for twice as much space, newly constructed and "beachy," vs the much closer in, half as large, nearly as old as my parents, but in the neighborhood everyone wants to be in (for the same reason everyone wants a Gold Card). Everyone except me and Billy Bob Thorton. It would be worth the drive, I explained, to be in a place my daughters would look forward to visiting--even for only nine months.

Anyway, called to tell the Realtor my decision, and she began to really press the other agent to return our calls. All day, from the initial showing, we'd been trying to reach her and not had our calls returned. Once I decided that was the place I wanted, the real press began. It finally took an e-mail to the other Realtor's broker. Result, delivered to me at dinner, finally relaxing with my daughter after the long day of searching: it rented the day before. Back to square one. Especially when my daughter said, "Don't take the old one. That's not where you're supposed to be."

So, Sunday morning, the search continued. On my own this time. After looking at a house only blocks from the Citadel, I decided to drive by a place I'd discounted early on because of the lack of a yard. Almost instantly, Jackie started nodding yes. Only a few more blocks from the Citadel, it was, for all practical purposes, new. I can't imagine what was left of the original building other than the frame itself and the stairs. One building, four apartments, two up, two down, with interior entrances from a central foyer. New brick facade exterior, new walls, new floors, new ceilings, wiring, pipes, cabinets, counters, appliances, etc. Seriously, I can't imagine what other than the frame and the stairs is original. Off street, gated parking on oyster-shell lot, common area w gazebo, grill, bar.

My daughter had said at dinner the night before, "Don't worry. That place (the one I thought I'd settled on) is rented because that's not where you're supposed to be either. There's a better place waiting. You'll see." The kid is clairvoyant. Less monthly rent, more space, walking distance to work, virtually new construction, and new construction in a class nothing else had approached (new hardwood floors, new stainless appliances, granite counters, all stone tile bath (of the sort my airline captain friend used in constructing his 6000 sq-ft "captain's house"), chair molding throughout the main living area. So I'll have to walk Sydni several times a day. Big deal. We'd started that already anyway. Good for both of us. And easy to do when you can walk to work in ten minutes.

So, happy ending to the house search. Only hitch, the two finished units were, of course, already rented. But the site supervisor promised one of the remaining units would be done by this Wednesday. "I guarantee it." Watching him work, on Sunday no less, I chose to believe him. I still do. We'll see. At any rate, I signed a lease.

All of this, of course--especially the happy ending--would seem to belie the title of this post. Trust me. Stay tuned. I'll get around to some of the other adventures that kept giving me flashbacks to images of a mule's four stiff legs rotating into the air as its bloated corpse floats by on the flood (unless I mis-remember my Faulkner). Eventually, I hope to have time for a good, bad, and ugly post of some of the "highlights" of this journey.

I'll say this up front though. Beyond good, beyond beautiful, beyond completely irreplaceable, has been the company of my oldest daughter. I've missed my youngest every step of the way, but I've been cheered throughout by the older of the two. We have similar tastes in most things, similar wit, similar peeves. We've laughed, stewed, and generally had a grand time, despite trials beyond any I would have willingly put her through. She's been a trooper of the most remarkable kind, never complaining. This is the daughter who sulked for a solid year after we moved the family to Fayetteville, NC, back in 2002. This nomadic odyssey? Nothing but good cheer, tolerance, always a step ahead when I needed help, fun. Fun even when everything else around us was anything but. As a result, for all its "just shoot me" moments, it'll be fun to look back on and remember. Always.

UPDATE: My new place will be ready Monday. Meanwhile, there's a park bench I've had my eye on just outside the gate to the Citadel. Doesn't get more convenient than that. Sydni will keep watch.

Back in the Land of "Ya'll"

One of my most vivid memories from one of the most vivid expenditures of however many lives I seem to have is climbing out from under my totaled 1975 Carmine Red Spitfire, upside down in a field of corn in eastern North Carolina in 1983, brushing the dust from my shoulders and hair, staring at the underbelly of my car and thinking, "Who can I get to help me turn this thing right side up so I can drive on back to Goldsboro--I've got to fly tomorrow" (never mind that the rear wheels were almost touching in the middle, the point of impact with the telephone pole having been about even with those rear wheels, except about three-quarters of the way through a roll) then turning to walk out of the field and being greeted immediately by a middle-aged, African-American woman of substantial girth, arms raised in praise, eyes wide and white and shifting between God's heaven and the ghost I suspect she thought she saw before her, and voice proclaiming for a now gathering crowd (I'd taken my time crawling out from under that totaled shell, taking inventory of limbs to make sure everything moved and was still attached--something I'd learned from having read Fleming's entire Jame's Bond series over the past year while killing time on nuclear alert waiting for WWIII), "HE'S ALIVE! HE'S ALIVE! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S ALIVE!"

I remember smiling warmly, struck by the enthusiasm of her earnest rejoicing at my fate, then asking politely, "I don't suppose ya'll might have a phone I could use?"

The rest of that story I'll save for another day, but I've told that much because her voice keeps echoing in my head today. My own inner voice keeps paraphrasing her chorus, but the enthusiasm matches her pitch just perfectly, "HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S BACK!" Back in the land of "ya'll," the land of pine, azaleas, dogwoods, sundresses, 30-second-shirt-soaking humidity, red clay, cotton, soy beans, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doobie Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Jack too. Home. Slightly off target perhaps, landing here in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than 3 hrs north, nearer Kannapolis, North Carolina, but closer than a lot of Soviet re-entry vehicles I think, and close enough that the language is the same, the customs much the same, the heritage much the same.

Charleston will have its own character that I may never fully understand--I got that much (and more) from Conroy, but this is still the South, with a capital S. And the differences from place to place in the South stand out far more starkly to someone who's never left it than to someone who's been too much out of it in the past three decades. I see far more similarity across its regions than I ever might have if I'd never left.

So, I'm back. And tomorrow, with the aid of a truly incredible Realtor, I hope to find the right place to live for a bit--nine months at least, while I fill a position as a Visiting Professor at the Citadel--longer maybe, depending on what fortunes the coming year brings. One step at a time.

I'll say this though, coming in those last 20 miles, I found the FM station that became the first new preset on my car stereo. Q104.5, Charleston's Classic Rock, is the clearest station I've ever heard. Ever. I'm nearing half a century. That station must broadcast with enough power to reach nearby galaxies. Classic tunes, crystal clear. I'd been three of the longest days ever on the road, pulling a six-by-twelve-foot trailer heavy enough not to like traveling faster than 60 mph without developing a mind of its own. Last time I'd crossed the country at that speed it was in that Spitfire and I was busting the national speed limit by 5 mph at the time. Having grown used to speeds closer to 80 mph on long trips, I'd forgotten how long such a road trip really can be. (And I have to offer a hat tip here to my teenage daughter who dropped out of warp to follow that trailer at that crawling pace in the same VW Beetle that the two of us had used to make the same trip in only two days heading the other direction only two months ago. Just another half day longer and they have needed to commit us both.) So when I was moving through the dial, looking for static so as to listen to an Audible book from my Palm Treo broadcast on FM, I was stopped in my tracks by the clarity of the sound, then riveted by the appropriateness of the words, as Bob Seger voiced my very thoughts, "And you don't feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through."

That was my welcome to Charleston around 1 a.m. this morning. About the time I was thinking, "This trip almost is through," and about the time I was hearing that big, beautiful, booming, woman's voice in my head, and thinking, "Yes. Yes. Yes. Praise God Almighty indeed. He's back."

81% Dixie

"81% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors?" Well, duh.

Find out how you score here.

Hat tip: Lex.

On the Road Again

Sorry for the light blogging lately. May is usually a travel month for me it seems. I've spent the last two weekends in the South, and I'm remembering more than ever what I love about the part of the country I call home.

Last night, my oldest daughter and I sat in the heavy cool Southern air at the Time Warner Pavilion in Raleigh and listened to James Taylor take us back. The last time we sat together at a JT concert would have been around 1996 at Wolftrap. It was her and her sister's first concert. She was all of about seven, and her sister all of four, but they loved James as much as we did, and there could be no leaving them with a sitter. In 2003, we heard him in Charlotte, but they sat in the seats with their aunt and uncle while we sat in the lawn with the folks who were more interested in partying than listening. Never again, that.

So last November, I took the younger sister to see JT in Colorado. The older of the two finished her first year of college weeks ago, but hung out here in NC waiting so that we could see JT. This morning, we leave to drive back to Colorado for the summer.

Last night, though, was magical. As I said, last time we sat together for JT in concert, she could still sit comfortably on my shoulders. When she was still crawling, I would carry her around the room, dancing gently, and singing with JT, mostly Never Die Young and That's Why I'm Here. Last night, as she occasionally rested her head on my shoulder, we were both traveling back to that gentle time, that time when a family was just beginning. It was, in every respect, a magical night.

NASCAR

I would have let this go today, but friend Jay, over at The Extended Table, made it nigh impossible. I was going to send him a little comment about why or why not some of us are race fans, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wouldn't be so little, so what the hell . . . .

I grew up in race country. On Saturday nights, I could hear the engines revving from not one, but two different directions: from the west would carry the sounds of Mooresville Drag Strip; from the south, the sounds of either the Concord Motor Speedway or the Charlotte (now Lowe's) Motor Speedway. If we didn't make it to another race all year, we drove the short 20 minutes down the road every year to The World 600 (now the Coca Cola 600).

I won ten bucks in 1975, the first time Richard Petty, already the winningest driver in NASCAR, ever one a race a Charlotte. Having taken the top ten starters' names and dropped them in a hat, we drew them out for a buck a name. I drew Petty and figured I could kiss my buck goodbye, but my Dad, more savvy to the law of averages, told me before the race even started, "Son, he's won more races than any other man alive and he's never won at Charlotte. I'd say he's due. Don't count your dollar lost yet." If memory serves, he finished about a lap and a half ahead of David Pearson's Ford.

Winning the ten bucks wasn't the best part though. The best part was cousin Marty, a Ford service manager at the time, and so a Pearson fan, through and through. Every time Petty would come by our spot in the second turn, Marty would stand and shout "Blow, Petty, Blow!" hoping for a blown engine. Once, as he said it, he slammed his beer can right through the top of his styrofoam cooler, resulting in an innovation later stolen by Coleman in the form of plastic coolers with small built in openings through which you can retrieve a beer without opening the whole lid. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that I was listening to the race on my transistor radio and had information about parts of the track we couldn't see. So when I told Marty with feigned disappointment, "Petty's into the wall on the backstretch," he bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. He was still dancing on the bench and broadcasting the news to everyone around us when Petty came cruising by a half minute later, smooth as silk, and still a lap ahead of the competition. It's the only time I think I can remember my cousin calling me a son of a bitch. :-D

Dale Earnhardt's original garage was less than a mile from my boyhood home. For years I resented "The Intimidator" for no better reason than that he got more famous faster than I did. I got over it though. His statue stands in the center of town now. Frankly, I think I prefer still drawing breath to that sort of fame. May Dale rest in peace.

With geography like that though, it would be far more of a wonder if I weren't a race fan than that I am.

Flu Sucks!

Apologies to all for my extended absence.

Last Saturday, I finally got out of bed at 7:30. . . . p.m. I took a shower, put on fresh PJ's and got horizontal again. Sunday was only a little different.

This week I've worked, but I've canceled a hunting trip this weekend--really I canceled a long overdue visit with a friend. The birds wouldn't have minded my cough, but I haven't been able to talk above a whisper for two days now and when I cough I sound like I belong in a sanatorium, so it seemed best not to inflict the worst flu I've had, probably in my life, on my friend and his family without at least the benefit of some occasional wit to make it worthwhile. Whatever it is has already infected my entire office staff, so whether I started it or was just the first to fully feel its effects, we know it's highly contagious.

I also canceled a trip to CA this week to take a canopy flight course with the man who set the world's record for landing the world's smallest canopy, Luigi Cani. When I say the flu sucks, I mean it.

I'll be back up and writing shortly, but in the meantime, I simply wanted to say, I am alive, but any rumors of my demise weren't exaggerated by much this time.

Conroy's My Losing Season

During part of a long conversation by a fire pit this past Thursday night, a fine cigar in one hand, a glass of The Macallan somewhere near the other, we were joined by my friend's youngest son. The maturity of our own children tends to sneak up on us because we see them every day. It's like our own age--we don't notice ourselves growing older, but look around at a class reunion and you end up praying that you don't look as "mature" as all your classmates. You do. Likewise, my own youngest daughter hasn't been a little girl for quite some time, but I gained a new appreciation for just how much of a young woman she's become through my time spent in conversation with my friend's son, who's very much a young man. The last opportunity I had to visit my friend in his home, this same young man was but a gleam in his father's eye.

At some point, in a bit of conversation that almost certainly left an indelible impression that I was a pontificating ass, I mentioned to the young man that he would never really understand how special his own family was until he was away at college and had heard from others the nature of the families in which they had grown up. I could be wrong of course. Perhaps he knows already that his own family is far nearer the ideal than 90% of his friends' or acquaintances' ever will be. I was speaking, of course, from my own experience with the dawning of that realization and being as guilty as ever of generalizing from it to that of others, blissfully oblivious that the futility of such generalization was the very point I was trying to make. (There is an old saying that, "We teach best what we most need to learn.")

In attempting to illustrate the point, I made reference to the particular case of a young lady who entered with my class at the academy, but who upon leaving, had no home to return to. Tonight, as I was reviewing some old posts and the links within them, I found that I had elaborated upon that very example in a comment to an August 7, 2007, post at The Archer Pelican. While I would normally let the link in that last sentence carry the day and not think of importing, virtually whole hog, both the bulk of my friend Phil's original post and all of my own comment, the topicality of that exchange to Thursday night's conversation prompts me to make an exception.

For the most part, other than noting the sadness inherent in recognizing that My Losing Season is not a work of fiction and also providing a link to Terry Gross's 2003 interview with Pat Conroy, Phil let Conroy's work speak for itself.

Pat Conroy calls home from the Citadel, collect:

"Don't make this a habit, young man. You know this family isn't made of money. How you're first couple of weeks in college going? You having a ball?"

I began weeping and couldn't stop. I'd suffered a mild breakdown of spirit and character as I lost grip on all the words I'd planned to say to my mother. For thirty seconds I sobbed until I could gain control. "Mom, you sent me a torture chamber," I gasped out finally.

"Well, it'll be good for you. It'll make a man out of you."

"It'll make a man like Dad out of me," I snapped back.

"Just how bad is it?" Mom asked. "Give me an example."

"It's worse than Dad--that's how bad it is. I'd much rather be living with Dad than going to this school."

After a long pause, my mother said, "Oh, my God."

Then my father took the phone, and I heard his despised, mocking voice. "It sounds like my little baby boy's having some boo-hoo time with Mommy. If baby boy wants to do some whining he can talk to Daddy-poo."

"I don't like the Citadel, Dad," I said, controlling the quaver in my voice. "I'm thinking about coming home."

I heard my father's laughter, then the hardening of his voice as he asked, "Where's home, son? You no longer have a home." He hung up before I could talk to my brothers or sisters.

And my response to that post made use of the same example that I alluded to on Thursday night, in trying, probably unnecessarily, to heighten my friend's son's awareness of just how exceptional a father he had. Likely enough, he already knows.

My own father's last words to me before I walked across tarmac to climb exterior stairs to a plane at Charlotte International Airport enroute to my induction at the US Air Force Academy were, "If you don't like it there, son, you can always come home." In many ways, that made either staying at or leaving a place for which my affection has steadily diminished since day one a more difficult decision whichever way it went, because it made it all mine. It was my idea to go, my decision to stay. Leaving would have been no disgrace, no great act of defiance. Staying was no vicarious fulfillment of anyone else's dream nor any expected compliance with any family tradition. It was, mostly, inertia.

But, by the time I left, I was keenly aware that not all my classmates were so paternally blessed. One girl I knew (mine was the second class with women) told me in a hallway during finals after our first year that this would be her last semester. I was surprised to learn that she would be staying in Colorado Springs after outprocessing rather than returning to Hawaii. "I can't," she said. "I have nowhere to go. My father told me that if I left the Academy, I had damned well better not come home." Another classmate, I dated years after she had also left that same summer. She was working to put herself through school. "My father told me that if I would just try the Academy for one year, that if I didn't like it, he would pay for my college elsewhere. Well, I didn't like it, but when I left he said, 'If you're going to throw away a free education, surely you don't expect me to pay for one.'"

Free. We used to refer to it as "a two hundred fifty thousand dollar education crammed up your ass a nickel at a time."

Conroy's experience resonates because it is far from unique. What makes people love a writer, is that he or she thinks or feels what the reader feels, but can express it far better.

Cruachan!

Enrevanche has been my catalyst today.

Along with his post about the Obama e-mails, Barry also posted this enlightening piece with an excerpt from and links to an article suggesting that Gospel music has its roots, not in Africa, but in the Hebrides.

And all along I thought I just liked it because it was great music. Now I learn it's really because both it and I are Scottish at heart.

Here's a tangential memory that began in the comment section of Enrevanche, but on further reflection seems worthy a place of its own:

When I was a cadet, some three decades ago now, the Duke of Argyll, Chief of the Clan Campbell and Head of her Majesty's Household in Scotland, came to visit my alma mater. All the cadets with that worthy surname were assembled to meet him (and given detailed tutelage on the proper decorum for doing so) one afternoon on the Chapel Wall. There were about nine of us, as I recall. I also recall a rather distinct pause and moment of hesitation (probably not proper decorum under the circumstances) when His Grace realized that some four of the nine of us bore skin darker than Italian coffee. It amused me. I doubt it amused my darker comrades, and rightly so. That moment, like Gospel music we're now told, was one more legacy of slave owning Scots.

(For what it's worth, "Cruachan!" at least according to Wikipedia, is the slogan of the Clan Campbell.)

Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jr.

In the course of attempting to find the proper term for the phrase, "These aren't the droids you're looking for," Barry (over at Enrevanche) and I discovered a common friend in our past. Friend, teacher, and mentor. Robert Galloway Kirkpatrick Jr's name appears on the title page of my bound MA thesis in the library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill because if there is much value in it, he is largely responsible for it. And I have to say that he is largely responsible for more than that in whatever I may ever have contributed to any classroom in which I sat facing students.

Barry happened to witness our old teacher in what wouldn't even have been an atypical moment, as his quiet good sense reduced Bill O'Reilly to not much more than sputters. He was, in my recollection, one of the finest examples I've ever seen of the effectiveness of simply allowing the truth to do its own work against falsehood and wrong-headedness. The transcript of that exchange is available here, but I'll warn you that the hosting site is, rather sadly, on the side of O'Reilly, and posted the transcript by way of rebutting a Washington Post article (the link for which seems to have expired) that itself is written in admiration of Professor Kirkpatrick's exchange with the talk show host.

One of my own favorite memories of the man (and there are plenty to choose from) comes from a conversation we had one day, over lunch in the shaded courtyard of his Chapel Hill home, during a pause from the detailed attention he gave my thesis from start to finish. We were talking about the wonder of children's acquisition of language and he used a recent example from his own life to illustrate how idioms work, being constructions whose meaning is markedly different from what the literal meaning of the words might imply to a non-native or very young speaker.

The example centered around a recent train trip he had taken with his family, and while I'm sure I won't remember it perfectly, I think I can convey the gist. As the time to board the train approached, he had sensed the growing nervousness of his young son. He reported that when he finally pressed the young man as to the cause of his growing apprehension, the answer created one of those indelible memories that form the center of family stories to be told and retold, and also gave him an important insight into the nature of idioms. "If we're going to ride on the train," his son asked, "how will we get up there and what will keep us from falling off?"

I was deeply saddened to hear of his passing three years ago. 64 seems young to me now. If there is one thing abundantly clear in the recollections of him published in the faculty newsletter and the campus newspaper, it is that he touched every life he encountered with a depth that was rare and very nearly universal. I wouldn't even be surprised to find that, after a little time, the professor's words sank in through even Bill O'Reilly's professionally thick skull. Quiet truths, meticulously laid out and supported, have a way of doing that. And that, in itself, is probably one of the most important things I ever learned from Professor Kirkpatrick.

That, and how to make a really, really good tuna salad sandwich.

Memory Lane (Someone Else's)

I go away . . . . but I do come back. If there were a clinic or a 12-step program for what I had, I would have checked myself in. But some s*** you just have to live through. Collecting material for an autobiography titled, It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time, is never easy, and it had better be a hell of a lot more fun to read about than live through or it's gonna be a real short run.

Anyway, part of re-entering the real world is getting back in touch with the digital one. Hmmm. Actually, I've been distracted by a digital one, but this digital one was definitely on the other side of the looking glass. In catching up with those who live in this one, I found I was late noticing a pointer from one of the best friends I've never met to a story by another I can't even call friend, yet, but for whom "fellow traveler" doesn't seem a stretch.

Out here in the "blogosphere," you occasionally run into a post with value for what it says. You occasionally run into one with value for how it says what it says. Rarely, some kind soul points the way to one that has value on both levels. I owe Chap a debt of gratitude for pointing the way to this Nov 27th post over at Neptunus Lex. If you're from the South and over, say, 40, it's worth the read for what it has to say. If you're someone of any age moved by well-above-average skill with the language, it's worth the read for how it says it. If you're in both categories, pour yourself a cup of coffee, set aside five minutes, and read. Don't read the way you might normally skim one of several blogs you'll peruse during your day. Read slowly, the way you might savor a good single-malt scotch and a fine, easy-drawing, maduro cigar. Take your time. You won't regret it.